Right, to make matters clear, I do not think the invasion is imminent. In fact there are several other military scenarios, less violent, but ending in the same result, namely subjugation of the island. My offhandendness was mainly caused by my belief that in the case of invasion, Taiwanese won't get much more than kind words from the rest of the world.
The most interesting thing is that the countries which can do most to protect Taiwan and who whould be the most interested in "rewarding" the outstanding achievement of Taiwanese mocratization, i.e. USA and Western Europe will also be the one hit worst by the conflict's after-effects, because they're dependent on the electronic products of Taiwan.
There are also non-military scenarios of subjugation of Taiwan - mainly by freezing its enormous (100 bilions or so USD) investmentment on the Continent. Curious thing is, it's hard to gues how would the Chinese economy react to such freezing.
I won't develop further, becuase the starting point is too general - but I'd love to participate in the discussion which will hopefully follow.
To points think needs to be corrected: China might collapse into another of its civil wars, which are historically her reaction to change I think this is a bit too far-fetched - most often collapse and civil wars happened when the ruling part exhausted its ability to change and ossified too much; or at least I think so.
Taiwan is a virtually independent country It's not virtually independent - it's a regular, independent state, albeit with very limited official international relations, but with a full capacity to maintain them.
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Date: 2006-01-14 07:05 pm (UTC)My offhandendness was mainly caused by my belief that in the case of invasion, Taiwanese won't get much more than kind words from the rest of the world.
The most interesting thing is that the countries which can do most to protect Taiwan and who whould be the most interested in "rewarding" the outstanding achievement of Taiwanese mocratization, i.e. USA and Western Europe will also be the one hit worst by the conflict's after-effects, because they're dependent on the electronic products of Taiwan.
There are also non-military scenarios of subjugation of Taiwan - mainly by freezing its enormous (100 bilions or so USD) investmentment on the Continent. Curious thing is, it's hard to gues how would the Chinese economy react to such freezing.
I won't develop further, becuase the starting point is too general - but I'd love to participate in the discussion which will hopefully follow.
To points think needs to be corrected:
China might collapse into another of its civil wars, which are historically her reaction to change
I think this is a bit too far-fetched - most often collapse and civil wars happened when the ruling part exhausted its ability to change and ossified too much; or at least I think so.
Taiwan is a virtually independent country
It's not virtually independent - it's a regular, independent state, albeit with very limited official international relations, but with a full capacity to maintain them.